INTROSPECTION:
To my newly minted colleagues and friends in the war against racism:
I deeply appreciate the love, empathy and support you've shown. The struggle is tough, but it gives me hope for brighter days ahead.
To my newly minted colleagues and friends in the war against racism:
I deeply appreciate the love, empathy and support you've shown. The struggle is tough, but it gives me hope for brighter days ahead.
I suspect that you are beginning to get a taste of the physical, emotional and mental stresses of living with racism in society. Many white people will never be able to experience it. But with open eyes,...
...you can see it for yourselves - perhaps some of you for the first time, but better late than never. For some it's a rude awakening, but it's more. It's vile, evil, and dangerous. The fact that many of you can be hurt, harmed or killed while expressing your constitutional...
...right to protest against the evil lets you know the kind of deep, dark internecine warfare we're up against. Racism is pure hate. And that hate hates anything that supports the object of it's hate. Therefore, you are no longer just the collateral damage of racism.
By expressing your support for the equality and fair treatment of blacks and other minorities, you become the enemy, too. And as you may be beginning to see the evils or racism play out before your eyes, it isn't just the behavior of individuals.
It's the structures that reinforce the values and processes in culture to keep things the way they are. (Ironically, conservatism's main trait is the insistence on keeping things the way they are and resisting change, too.
So if you add one plus one you get the question, "what is the nexus of conservatism and racism?" which is a highly necessary another topic for discussion in the very near future.) While it may be shocking it isn't new. For blacks in America it's always been this way, even for.
those who deny racism as their means to cope. Now add to that the notion of living with systemically and deliberately inferior health care access, schools, job availability, income equality, police terrorism,...
...as well as other societal inequities and burdens and it become clear why Black people in America have significantly shorter lifespans than everyone else in the nation. It's all by design.
And for many people who have just recently come to the fight, had it not been for them - you - being horrified at seeing a cop with his knee on the neck of a black man literally squeezing the life out of him but also symbolizing...
...the larger institution of oppression, all of the above would sound like a conspiracy theory. Yet it continues to remain an existential threat to the survival of black people every day of our lives. And a long as we're not safe, you're not safe, either.
Blacks in this nation have always fought against and resisted racism, white supremacy and oppression. We've been at it for 400 years. And we will continue. We have no choice. But I am glad to see more and more people coming over to the side of righteousness, equality and justice.
My strong desire is that you, too, will stay in the fight until the very end when change comes for good.
Until then, racism continues to accrue pernicious, ugly costs, and America has yet to settle it's past debts with black America.
Until then, racism continues to accrue pernicious, ugly costs, and America has yet to settle it's past debts with black America.
@threadreaderapp unroll...
